Quotes About God

So, too, faith comes only through the word of God, the Gospel, that preaches Christ: how he is both Son of God and man, how he died and rose for our sake. Paul says all this in chapters

If every man had faith, we would need no more laws, but every one would of himself at all times do good works, as his confidence in God teaches him.

It is faith—without good works and prior to good works—that takes us to heaven. We come to God through faith alone.

So blind are we: with our bodily sickness and need we run to God; with the soul's sickness we run from Him, and are unwilling to come back before we are well, exactly as if there could be one God who could help the body, and another God who could help the soul; or as if we would help ourselves in spiritual need, although it really is greater than the bodily need. Such plan and counsel is of the devil.

Works are the fruits and signs of faith. God judges people according to these fruits. These fruits spring from faith in a way that publicly indicates whether or not we have faith in our hearts. God will not judge us by asking whether we are called Christians or whether we have been baptized. He will ask each one of us, "If you are a Christian, then tell me, where are the fruits that demonstrate your faith?

We exalt our calling, not to gain glory among men, or money, or satisfaction, or favor, but because people need to be assured that the words we speak are the words of God. This is no sinful pride. It is holy pride.

It is the nature of God's Word and the regulation of His will first to destroy what is in us and reduce to nothing whatever we are, and then erect His own structure.

Augustine explains: The flesh needs many things even for this life, and this, too, it seeks from God, because not only spiritual things but also earthly things are to be sought from no one but God.

This is exactly how those who rely on their own efforts to be justified still act today. They concentrate on the good that they do, which they hope will please God. They don't trust in God's mercy and his grace. They aren't hoping that God will forgive their sins through Christ. This

God created us just in order to redeem us.. . .

Let us learn, then, to despise the threats and cruel plans of our enemies and conclude for certain that God in the heavens has decided on quite different things and is already laughing at them but playing with us so that He may prove our faith and hope and discipline us.

For "no one has ascended into heaven but He who descended" (John 3:13), that is, no one arrives at the understanding of divinity but he who has first been humbled and who has come down to an understanding of himself, for there he discovers the understanding of God at the same time.

So if you wish to rejoice in Christ, for His sake you must bear sorrow, confusion, inward and outward vexations. The reason is that you cannot hold to Christ without offending the prince of the world. You cannot hold fast to the God of life without rousing against yourself the author of death.

THIS, therefore, is also essentially necessary and wholesome for Christians to know: That God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal, and infallible will.

For it to be called a Sacrament, there first needs to be an outward, tangible sign or created thing by which God deals visibly with us, that we may be sure of it. It is not His will to work with us apart from outward means, solely by secret suggestions or special revelation from heaven. But the outward work and sign does not by itself avail or do anything unless it is joined by His Word, by which the sign is made effective and we are made aware of what God is doing in us by this sign.

In brief, trust not in any who exalt you, but in those who humiliate you. For this is the judgment of God:

Trying to merit grace by preceding works, therefore, is trying to placate God with sins, which is nothing but heaping sins upon sins, making fun of God, and provoking His wrath.

Neither men who try to keep the Law, nor those who do not try to keep it, are justified before God, for they are all spiritually dead.

Accordingly, let us, too, learn to put aside all questions and simply to go in the name of the Lord and do whatever God has commanded, whether it is foolish, offensive, or dangerous. If God's command is connected with it, even a work that is disgraceful and shameful in the sight of reason is most beautiful and holy; for there is no greater and better adornment than the Word of God.

Moreover, I cannot bear with laws for the interpretation of the word of God, since the word of God, which teaches liberty in all other things, ought not to be bound.

Nothing so provokes God as unbelief, for this means denying God directly and thus committing idolatry.

They testify that nature is not changed but is preserved by God. But the stupid and crazy mob of monks has taught that parents, wives, and the world should be abandoned and that one should withdraw into a monastery. But what is to become of human society or finally of all life? Surely that was not sanctity or worship of God, as they have called it; it was satanic madness.

And this our God, so Scripture says, rejoices over us when we are persuaded that He is not incensed at us but is our kind and lovable Friend.

Meanwhile it is to be noted that the whole Scripture of God is divided into two parts: precepts and promises.